Meteor strikes close to home for BEHS exchange student

"Kate" Dubovitskaya. Staff photo

Editor's Note: Senior Yekaterina Dubovitskaya woke up Friday morning to find an email message from her mother back in Chelyabinsk, Russia, where a meteor had just crashed to earth, blinding drivers on their morning commutes and shattering glass in homes and office buildings for miles around."Kate," who is spending the year at BEHS, is a staff writer for the Eagle Times. She shared this account of what she heard from family and friends back home in Russia.

"My Mum was in the car at the moment and then she saw this bright flash. She went out of the car to see what happened and she said it was really hot. It felt like her clothes were burning on her. Everybody was staring at the sky, trying to understand and just waiting. My mom said it was an incredibly scary moment because there was no sound, nothing. And then there was an explosion, everything started shaking, everybody could hear the sound of a breaking glass. A lot of people thought it was a plane crash; some people thought it was a bomb. There was no cell phone connection for some time afterwards. One of my mother's colleagues was sitting turned back to the window and she now has a burn mark like a sunburn on her face. Some parts of the city are seriously damaged; the tallest building in the city has lost a lot of glass; the drama theater has lost all its glass. In the State University there is some serious damage to the ceilings. A lot of apartment buildings have been damaged too. More than 900 people asked for help. The damage to the city was said to be more than $30 million. One of my friends was hurt a little, but nothing serious. I was really worried because it was early morning and everybody was at school, but I guess my school has a good location. They had only one window broken. When I got the email, I was really scared. In one moment I felt what my mom felt when I said we had an earthquake over here. I knew that everything was fine, but I still was worried. People in my city got rid of the fear pretty fast though. Some started making jokes that Russian men don't break promises when they say "I'll get you a star from the sky." (Well, seriously, it was the day after V-day! The delivery was late :)Some of my friends here made fun of the whole, "A Good Day To Die Hard" movie going to the theaters, and the cast visiting Russia, and joked that it's Bruce Willis who saved the world.

Russian meteor was biggest to fall to earth since 1908

This photo was taken by one of Kate's classmates as the meteor streaked by the classroom window.